La Cravate donc etait un Obstacle…

And what a tie! If you want to see the  Symbolic Order in action then here’s Jacques Lacan fiddling with his decorative apparatus at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1972.

We’d like to invest his inadvertent comment  ‘La cravate donc etait un obstacle …’ with a cultural resonance equivalent to ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’. In this case, though, it really means ‘ceci n’est pas un micro…’ Make what you will of that, but as his introducer says on film here, ‘the singular, essential and most adequate way to experience the teaching of Jacques Lacan is to attend his seminars’. Therefore, no text here, but something even better, a film of the Lacanian conference – ou bien, un Freudien avec une cigare…